Dear Crooked Colleague,
I hope this letter finds you in ill will. I honestly cannot say
that I am surprised by your actions. I only gained your
attention once you saw my research and thought you could
benefit from my work, my work! I fell ill and died in
1916, only a year after my discovery. I was only 24 years
old and publishing my discovery would have changed
everything, my legacy, the ideas of women being in
STEM, especially an African American woman in STEM.
But no, you decided to take the credit and published my
work in your name. You named it the “Dean Method,”
presenting the discovery as your own. For decades, you
received all of the accolades for the first treatment for
leprosy, with no mention of my name anywhere to be
found. Medical textbooks, journals, and historical books
credit you with this breakthrough treatment, when I am the
one which built the foundation of this ground-breaking
treatment. What confuses me the most is that you took off
where I left off, continuing the work I had started, but
never uttered my name. You refined the method, wrote and
published papers on it. You were celebrated as a medical
pioneer. You took advantage of my naivety, the need to be
noticed and recognized overpowered human decency. All
you cared about was your legacy, what about mine, what
about my accomplishments? How will anyone know my
hard work when you have erased it from history? I once
wrote in my high school yearbook, “ I work and work and
still it seems that I have done nothing.” How ironic that
statement seems in this context. Well, the joke is on you.
After decades of not being recognized for my research, ahistorian named Kathryn Takara found my original thesis.
After more research, they discovered your theft of my
discovery. The university installed a plaque in my honor,
established the Alice Ball Scholarship, and dedicated a
chaulmoogra tree also in my honor. My name was even
inducted in the Women’s Hall of Fame. My story may
have been erased by a man fueled by ego and ambition,
but my legacy will forever shine in the limelight. My story
also shows even if justice is delayed, that does not mean
that justice should be denied.
Your greatest mistake,
Alice Ball
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